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March 28, 2013

(++++) HAPPY HERPING

Frogged. By Vivian Vande
Velde. Harcourt. $16.99.

Boris on the Move. By Andrew
Joyner. Branches/Scholastic. $15.99.

Boris Gets a Lizard. By
Andrew Joyner. Branches/Scholastic. $15.99.

Herpetology, the scientific study
of reptiles and amphibians, doesn’t garner much attention in books for young
readers, but the ups and downs of people with herps, or people who are herps, provide a lot of
entertainment. Vivian Vande Velde takes her own unique and rather dark view of
fairy tales into Frogged, the
umpteenth version of the Grimm fairy tale of The Frog Prince and one of many modern retellings in which the
kissing of the frog doesn’t do quite what it should. Here, Princess Imogene,
fresh from being bored by being required to read a book called The Art of Being a Princess, encounters
a talking frog that claims to be a bewitched prince despite being ill-mannered
and not very well-spoken. Imogene, who has a good heart, kisses the frog to
break the spell, and finds herself
turned into a frog – a no-longer-unusual twist on the old story. But this is a
Vande Velde book, not a sweet Disney retelling such as The Princess and the Frog, the 2009 movie in which two companion
frogs need to find themselves, find each other and find true love. It turns out
that the transformed-into-a-frog character was not a prince at all, but a mere
commoner and a rather nasty one to boot, who ran afoul of a witch by treating
her rather foully, and who fully deserved to be frogged. But the spell under which
he was placed, while it could be broken by someone kissing the frog, would turn
the kisser into a frog while transforming the kissee back to a (rather
unpleasant) human. This seems pretty unfair, especially to Imogene, who, having
experienced frogginess, does not want to turn someone else into a frog through a kiss. She tries to persuade the boy,
Harry, to help her get to the witch so she can try to cajole the magic wielder
into reversing the spell; but Harry does not care at all and goes on his merry
and unconcerned way, leaving Imogene thoroughly frogged and unable to make the
long trip (for a frog) to the witch’s home, much less back to her parents’
castle.And then there’s the traveling
theater troupe. What is that doing
here? Well, Vande Velde at her best and most amusing (which she is in Frogged) pulls the story this way and
that, testing out its directions and limits until she finds how to shape it
just right. Think of it as a taffy pull with words.Imogene, it turns out, has a long way to go
and a lot of growing-up to do before she will have a chance to live happily
ever after; and while it spoils nothing to reveal that she does get her happy ending, it would spoil quite a bit to explain
how. Finding out requires a hop, skip and jump into Frogged for a refreshing dip into silly absurdity that nevertheless
has some heart and soul at its core. Amphibians such as frogs are often wrongly
said to be cold-blooded (untrue: they simply heat their bodies from external
sources rather than an internal furnace like the one we mammals have); but the
cold-bloodedness in Frogged lies not
in the frog but in some of the surrounding humans, while the warmth and
amusement of the book penetrate just about everywhere.

The herp in Boris Gets a Lizard is, of course, a
lizard, not a frog, but what kind of
lizard it turns out to be is what the book is all about. The first two Boris
books are in Scholastic’s new “Branches” line, which offers easy-to-read,
nicely illustrated chapter books that are more substantial than early chapter
books from other publishers. Andrew Joyner’s Boris is an anthropomorphic pig,
somewhat more bristly than pigs usually are in children’s books, and he has a
taste for books, sports, pets, and big dreams. In the first Boris book, Boris on the Move, lizards make a couple
of cameo appearances: a small one when Joyner introduces Boris and a big one in
one of Boris’ imagined adventures. The real
adventure here, though, is suitably small. Boris lives with his parents in an
old bus that no longer goes anywhere but that his folks used to use to travel
the world – they seem to be upright-standing porcine hippies who have now
settled down. Realizing that Boris is unhappy about never going anywhere, his
parents get the bus going again one day and take Boris on a trip to a nearby
“conservation park,” where he gets separated from them and encounters something
coming through the bushes – not, however, a dangerous beast (or even a herp),
but a quickly adopted pet to add to the family. Then, in Boris Gets a Lizard, Boris’ big dreams lead him to ask the local
zoo to let him borrow a Komodo dragon – the world’s largest lizard – instead of
the small skink that he actually has as one of his pets. Certain that the
Komodo dragon will soon be visiting him, Boris, who has been regaling his class
with Komodo dragon stories every Tuesday, makes preparations at home and
invites everyone to come see the huge reptile when it arrives. But of course it
doesn’t, and Boris has to work his way through the self-created misunderstanding
and mend fences with all his friends – which he does quite neatly. A zoo visit
lets Boris and friends actually see a Komodo dragon, and a snake and skink have
cameo roles in this book as well, and the whole thing is a pleasantly happy and
herpy adventure in a series that looks as if it will appeal to a great many
early readers.